“Rust” filmmaker Joel Souza finally broke his silence and spoke out publicly for the first time since the 2021 fatal shooting on the New Mexico set that left cinematographer Halyna Hutchins dead and him injured. Speaking to Vanity Fair, the 51-year-old director said that the shooting “ruined” the man he was as he recalled how it felt to be shot that day on the western film set where a gun Alec Baldwin was holding discharged a bullet that hit Hutchins and Souza during rehearsals. Baldwin has always maintained that there was “no trigger pull.” The filmmaker said that being shot “felt like a horse kicked me in the shoulder or someone hit me with a bat. The whole right side of my body went numb, completely numb, but it also hurt excruciatingly at the same time, if that makes sense.” Joel Souza, the ‘Rust’ director who Alec Baldwin shot during a rehearsal of a scene, is breaking his silence on the fatal day that took the life of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins https://t.co/dS3AyoBZuQ — Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) August 15, 2024 “It’s just like everything went tingly and numb but hurt like hell all at once,” he added. “And I staggered back and was either on my knees or on my a**—and just…yelling. I don’t even know what the hell I was yelling.” Tickets for “Am I Racist?” are on sale NOW! Buy here for a theater near you. “It’s bizarre to have been shot,” Souza continued. “And then, who was holding the gun? That’s bizarre. I had this weird thought, like, God, I remember watching ‘The Hunt for Red October’ in the movie theater when I was a kid. It’s like your older self whispers to your younger self, ‘Hey, that guy…someday…’ Life can take you down some very bizarre roads.” But Souza said he was not grateful to have survived after Hutchins died. “When I tell someone it ruined me, I don’t mean in the sense that people might generally think,” Souza said. “I don’t mean that it put my career in ruins. I mean, internally, the person I was just went away. That stopped.” “I remember specifically going to sleep that night and hoping I didn’t wake up the next morning. I hoped I would just bleed out overnight because I didn’t want to be around anymore,” he added. “It was a very difficult moment. I remember just thinking, ‘Maybe I’ll just sort of bleed to death — that would suit me just fine.'” He also talked about returning to the film set and finishing the film Hutchins was shooting, making it clear the fatal scene she had shot has vanished “in its entirety.” “Gone. Not just that, but also a few things leading up to it,” Souza said. “Everything needed to be entirely reconceived there. There were a few things that came before that now wouldn’t make story sense. So we just sort of eliminated it and came up with something entirely different.” “I’m not going back to that,” he added. “I’m glad you asked. I don’t want anyone who ever does see this to be waiting for that. No one ever pushed to keep anything like that.” Related: SAG-AFTRA Defends Alec Baldwin In ‘Rust’ Shooting As Actor Prepares To Defend Himself Against New Charge

If you think just because she’s all grown up, Jodie Sweetin’s lost Stephanie Tanner’s classic moves, we have two words, “How rude!” At 42, Jodie can still kill it on the dance floor, and a new video posted to Instagram proves it. Jodie and Mitchell Gerrard Johnson teamed up for a remake of the iconic Steph moment from her Full House days. The pair didn’t stop with relearning the moves to a hip-hop number set to Motownphilly. They went all out and recreated the outfit, too. Jodie told Today in 2018 that the dance sequence was one of her favorite memories on the set of Full House. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Mitchell Gerrard Johnson (@mgjohns) “All of the girls in the background were girls I actually danced with at my dance studio. And my dance teacher came in and choreographed the number for that week and everything. So these were all my friends, ’cause I did grow up dancing,” Jodie said. Full House ran from 1987 to 1995. And Jodie co-starred in the Netflix reboot Fuller House from 2016 to 2020, alongside other original cast members Candice Cameron Bure and Andrea Barber. Jodie Sweetin’s Throwback Dance Was A Hit It’s no surprise that fans of the original loved the remake. A fan cheered, “Iconic song. Iconic dance. Iconic episode. This makes me happy. Thank you for recreating.” It’s a top-of-mind moment for this person. “I think about this episode a lot hahaha!” Thankfully one Instagrammer asked the burning question on all our minds, “Did you still have the dance memorized or did you have to relearn it all?” Jodie replied, “It weirdly came back after watching it a couple times! I even learned the WHOLE thing! But… we decided to not die in the heat and just do the first half. For now… hahaha.” Color us impressed. Thanks, Jodie, for the sweet dose of nostalgia. We might have to relearn this dance ourselves for our next family gathering…..Maybe not. You can find the source of this story’s featured image here. The post Jodie Sweetin & Friend Perfectly Recreate The Iconic “Full House” Dance appeared first on InspireMore.

We’ve entered this bizarro world

'Shoot the FBI first and ask questions later'

Vice President Kamala Harris visited San Francisco on Sunday to hold a fundraising event at an elitist venue in one of its richest neighborhoods. Her event was at the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill. If you visit that hotel’s website, you will see that its cheapest room on a weeknight this time of year is $264. However, it also offers a three-bedroom suite for $15,432 a night. Going to the Harris fundraiser there, however, could have cost you far more than that. The San Francisco Chronicle posted a story on Sunday with this headline: “700 at Kamala Harris’ S.F. fundraiser, with tickets up to $500,000.” “Kamala Harris held a San Francisco fundraiser Sunday where attendance cost as much as $500,000, according to an invitation obtained by the Chronicle,” the newspaper reported. “Donors needed to spend at least $3,300 to enter the fundraiser; tickets costing less than $250,000 were sold out as of Thursday morning,” it said. “The top ticket was $500,000,” said another story by the Chronicle. The Nob Hill neighborhood where Harris held this fundraiser is sometimes called Snob Hill. A description of it posted on the website of a local tour company provides some sense of why this is the case. “One of the oldest and most illustrious of San Francisco’s neighborhoods sits on Nob Hill,” says Real San Francisco Tours. “It’s also one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the whole world, in terms of per capita income (and real estate value), which isn’t that surprising when you consider how expensive the Bay Area generally is in every way.” In fact, as this column has noted before, the seven wealthiest counties in this country—when measured by median household income from 2018 through 2022—were all suburbs of San Francisco and Washington, D.C. San Francisco itself was the 11th wealthiest county—with a median household income of $136,689. So, what did Harris tell these individuals who paid up to $500,000 to meet with her on Snob Hill? “Harris promised Sunday to ‘put middle-class families and working-class families first. … When the middle class is strong, our whole nation is strong,'” the Chronicle reported. Seven years before this Nob Hill fundraiser, Harris gave her first speech on the Senate floor—and it was not about working-class and middle-class Americans. It was about then-President Donald Trump’s actions aimed at stemming illegal immigration. “By fiat, we have seen the president stick taxpayers with a bill for a multibillion-dollar border wall, without regard for the role of the U.S. Congress under Article 1 of the Constitution,” she said. “By fiat, we have seen a president mandate the detention of immigrants, both documented and undocumented, creating a dragnet that could ensnare 8 million people. “By fiat, the president has ordered the creation of what essentially will be a 15,000-member deportation force,” she said. “But the truth is,” she said, “the vast majority of the immigrants in this country are hardworking people who deserve a pathway to citizenship.” Legal immigrants, of course, already have a pathway to citizenship. It is only those who have come here illegally or who have overstayed their visas who do not. What is the impact of illegal immigration on the working-class families that Harris told the crowd on Nob Hill she would put first? On April 26, 1979, United Farm Workers of America President Cesar Chavez testified in a hearing at the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee held in Salinas, California. Chavez argued that illegal alien workers hurt the efforts of legal workers to earn better wages. “For so many years we have been involved in agricultural strikes; organizing almost 30 years as a worker, as an organizer, and as president of the union—and for all these almost 30 years it is apparent that when the farm workers strike and their strike is successful, the employers go to Mexico and have unlimited, unrestricted use of illegal alien strikebreakers to break the strike,” Chavez told the committee. “Lawbreaking begets more lawbreaking, and when these illegal aliens come in to break a strike they have to be harbored; they have to be transported; and labor contractors have to be used to direct them and supervise them,” said Chavez. “What about other laws?” asked Chavez. “What about the contributions the employers have to make to Social Security and unemployment insurance? How are those contributions made? These men do not have Social Security numbers.” How would Vice President Kamala Harris have answered Cesar Chavez? COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Kamala Harris on Snob Hill appeared first on The Daily Signal.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Several asset managers leveraged Idahoans’ pension funds to support a racial and climate agenda in 2022 and 2023, according to a report from a conservative watchdog group, the American Accountability Foundation. The Public Employee Retirement System of Idaho used six asset managers—Adelante Capital Management, AllianceBernstein, Brandes Investment Partners, Fiera Capital, Longview Partners, and Mellon Capital Management—that handled more than $5 billion of the pension system’s stock portfolio, according to its investment report. These managers used Idahoans’ pension funds to support over 150 environmental, social, and governance shareholder resolutions on issues including race, gender, climate change, and politics, according to documents obtained by the American Accountability Foundation through a public records request and shared exclusively with the Daily Caller News Foundation. As public asset owners diversify into new asset classes and integrate ESG into their investment process, find out how BNY Mellon can help manage new risks and new data sets for greater insights. https://t.co/xXCS4oE2ww pic.twitter.com/IbIlVMl19F— BNY (@BNYMellon) October 18, 2022 “The people of Idaho never voted for racial equity audits or strangling American energy, yet these ESG money managers are leveraging Idaho’s pension funds to push for these policies anyway,” American Accountability Foundation President Thomas Jones said. “This is just another example of how ESG seeks to subvert the will of the American people and impose their radical agenda whether we like it or not.” There were 153 examples of these asset managers voting in support of what the watchdog refers to as “woke” shareholder proposals using funds from the Public Employee Retirement System of Idaho. They include “racial and gender pay gap reports, efforts to defund conservative candidates and pro-business trade associations, radical climate policy, and pro-abortion initiatives,” the American Accountability Foundation said. For instance, AllianceBernstein in 2023 used PERSI’s pension funds to vote in support of a “racial equity audit” proposal at Comcast, which shareholders didn’t approve. The resolution, introduced by the Service Employees International Union Master Trust, advocated that the board of directors “oversee an independent racial equity audit analyzing Comcast’s adverse impacts on nonwhite stakeholders and communities of color and describing the steps, if any, Comcast plans to take to mitigate those impacts.” AllianceBernstein also voted in 2023 to support a resolution at Wells Fargo for a “Report on Congruency of Political Spending,” to evaluate how the banking giant’s political contributions align with its corporate values of supporting ESG. The proposal, which shareholders also rejected, particularly takes issue with Wells Fargo’s backing the State Financial Officers Foundation and the Republican Attorneys General Association because they oppose ESG policies. In 2022, Mellon leveraged PERSI’s pension funds to vote to back a resolution at Chevron for the oil giant to publish targets to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to align with the Paris climate agreement and “limit global warming,” according to the proposal. The asset manager in the same year used the system’s funds to vote in support of a resolution for AT&T to publish a report on its political expenditures and how they line up with company values, including “carbon neutrality,” according to the resolution from As You Sow, a nonprofit that assigns ESG scores to companies. Shareholders ultimately didn’t approve the resolutions at Comcast, Wells Fargo, or Chevron. But Mellon voted in support of a resolution at The Walt Disney Co. in 2022 pushing for a “Pay Equity Report” at the company, which shareholders approved. “Actively managing pay equity is associated with improved representation and diversity is linked to superior stock performance and return on equity,” it states. “Black employees represent 8% of Disney’s workforce, but only 5% of executive leadership. Women account for 51% of Disney’s workforce and 42% of executive leadership.” The Public Employee Retirement System of Idaho managed retirement and benefit plans for over 65,000 public employees in that state as of 2017, according to the National Institute on Retirement Security. “The PERSI fund (DB plan) does not have any investments in funds with an ESG mandate,” a spokesperson for the state pension system said, referring to a defined benefit plan. PERSI’s “investment managers are responsible for voting all proxies in a manner consistent with the best economic interest of the system for the exclusive benefit of the system,” its investment policy statement said. However, critics argue that ESG investments fail to serve shareholders’ best fiduciary interests. “It would be outrageous for PERSI asset managers to advance their own personal political agendas using the property of Idaho workers and families. Even to suggest doing so indicates sufficient grounds for termination,” Idaho economist JD Foster, former chief economist at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, told the Daily Caller News Foundation, adding: “Asset managers should have one agenda and that is to maximize the value of the assets under management subject to the normal guidelines of fiduciaries.” The S&P Global Clean Energy Index has plunged by about 10% this year, while the S&P 500 Energy Index, which features many oil and gas firms, rose over 7%. Asset managers also used Nevadans’ pension funds to push similar proposals, the Daily Caller News Foundation previously reported, based on another public records request by the American Accountability Foundation. Nevada Public Employee Retirement System enlists the services of asset managers such as BlackRock, AllianceBernstein, Mellon, and State Street Global Advisors, who collectively manage over $30 billion of the system’s stock portfolio. Adelante, AllianceBernstein, Brandes, Fiera, Longview, and Iowa state Treasurer Julie Ellsworth didn’t respond to requests for comment. Mellon declined to comment. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The post Asset Managers Leveraged Red State Pension Funds to Back ‘Racial Equity,’ Climate Agenda, Report Finds appeared first on The Daily Signal.

For over a decade, there has been a project proposal to build about 800 miles of transmission lines from Kansas through Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana to deliver wind-generated electricity to consumers. However, a recent August 8 ruling by an Illinois court halts the planned construction of lines in that state. This project, known as the Grain Belt Express, will need to be replicated about 110 more times across the U.S.—creating up to 91,000 miles of new transmission lines in total—if the Biden-Harris administration wants to reach its goal by 2035 for 100% clean electricity that is generated through “renewable” energy sources.   While natural gas, coal, and nuclear plants can be close to population centers, solar and wind farms are often in remote areas, thereby necessitating extensive transmission infrastructure to deliver electricity to populated areas. Putting this transmission line expansion into perspective, America has been building an average of 645 miles annually from the second half of the 2010s through today. At this rate, it would take nearly 141 years to build out the grid to meet the Biden-Harris policy goal. To maintain a reliable electrical grid, upgrading and building transmission lines are crucial. However, 91,000 miles of transmission lines will primarily transmit heavily subsidized solar and wind energy, placing upward pressure on electricity prices Renewable energy sources drive up electricity costs due to various reasons, including the additional cost for backup power generation and building the costly, extensive transmission infrastructure. As an example, California’s aggressive adoption of wind and solar caused residential electricity prices to surge nearly 170%, from about 12 cents to 33 cents per kilowatt hour between 2004 and 2024. Conversely, Florida, which expanded natural gas usage instead of renewable sources, saw a price increase of just 65% over the same period. Building such an extensive transmission infrastructure for renewables will cost over $220 billion—an expense that will be paid by individuals because companies will recoup these costs by passing them on to electricity users. This means power will become even more expensive, disproportionately hurting low-income families, farmers, and small businesses, who are already struggling in an economy with high food and energy prices. Transmission lines also decrease property values. A study published in the Journal of Real Estate Research found that vacant lots next to these lines sell for 45% less than lots without power lines nearby, and those within 1,000 feet are sold at a 18% discount than comparable lots farther away. Alternatively, underground transmission lines do not ruin the view but are at least eight times more expensive than overhead ones—costs that will be passed on to Americans’ electricity bills. The primary reason for the high projections in transmission lines is that they are needed to link wind and solar farms that are mainly in remote areas to population centers. For example, the Midwest and Southwest are ideal for wind and solar energy but are far from populated areas, necessitating transmission lines over long distances. However, such transmission infrastructure would not be needed if the grid were powered by a reliable mix of baseload energy sources—natural gas, nuclear, and coal power—that provide a steady and reliable supply of electricity to meet the grid’s minimum demand. Natural gas power plants are near population and industrial centers, reducing the need for extensive transmission lines. For example, the Ravenswood Generating Station is located about two miles away from the Empire State Building in New York City, the most populous metropolis in the U.S. For nuclear power plants, over one-third of the U.S. population lives or works within 50 miles of them. For example, the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in Maryland is about 45 miles away from the White House. Even if the Biden-Harris administration wanted to build new transmission lines, such projects take on average a decade to complete because of the slow government permitting process and local opposition. Therefore, the government has been trying to expedite the approval process for transmission lines, such as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s recent rule on improving long-term regional transmission planning and the Department of Energy’s rule to slash the federal permitting process timeline by half. The recent bipartisan Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 has also been introduced in Congress to address this issue. While a faster approval process will be beneficial for infrastructure development in any modern economy, the entire purpose of the government’s expediting actions has been to build the projected tens of thousands of miles of transmission lines that will enable “green” investors to reap a return on their costly investments—investments that raise the cost of electricity rather than lowering it. Residents end up paying twice—once through higher utility bills, and a second time by having to look at such ugly transmission lines. Instead, the U.S. should rely primarily on fossil fuels and nuclear energy, supplemented by various other energy sources. This mix of reliable energy sources will result in electricity that is resilient, reliable, and affordable—while also reducing the need for 91,000 more miles of unsightly, expensive transmission lines. The post 1 More Way the Administration’s ‘Green’ Electricity Plan Will Cost Consumers Big appeared first on The Daily Signal.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris slammed Big Pharma for “inflating the price of life-saving medications” in a speech Thursday in Largo, Maryland. But Biden and Harris’ congressional campaigns received $9 million and $2 million, respectively, from 1990-2024. “Folks, this is a fight all of us have been fighting for a long time,” Biden said. “Thinking about Big Pharma, we pay more for prescription drugs, it’s not hyperbole, we pay more for prescription drugs than any advanced nation in the world.” Despite Biden and Harris’ strong anti-Big Pharma rhetoric, Biden was the top congressional recipient of donations from pharmaceuticals and health care products from 1990-2024, accepting more than $9 million. Harris has received the sixth-largest amount of Big Pharma donations out of Congress members, cashing in at $2,308,104, according to OpenSecrets. “We’re going to keep standing up to Big Pharma,” Biden said. “I fought too damn hard to yield now.We’re not backing down.” This was Harris and Biden’s first joint event since he exited the 2024 presidential race. Harris boasted her record of holding “bad actors accountable” and lowering the cost of prescription drugs. She said that as attorney general of California, she “took on pharmaceutical companies for deceptive marketing and illegally inflating the cost of drugs,” and “won billions of dollars as the United States fought to pass laws that would make health care more affordable and accessible for all Americans.” The administration has finally addressed that Medicare was prohibited by law from negotiating lower drug prices, Harris said. Medicare and pharmaceutical companies have reached an agreement on lower drug prices for 10 drugs. The Biden-Harris administration says this will save American taxpayers are expected to save $6 billion on prescription drug costs.  The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, rolled out a three-year “demonstration project” to subsidize the elevated premiums and keep them low.  Critics say price-fixing drugs increases taxes and reduces patient access to medicine, including cancer drugs. The Biden camp describes the process of Medicare drug pricing as a process of “negotiation,” conjuring up the image of “give and take” of private sector contracting, but this is not accurate, health expert at The Heritage Foundation Robert Moffit writes. Rather, Biden is reviving government price controls. Any pharmaceutical research and manufacturing company that does not agree to the “maximum price” of a drug set by Medicare is subject to an excise tax. Government price-control regimes cause a cost shift from the controlled to the uncontrolled sector of the economy, Moffit says. If pharmaceutical research and development companies are forced to offer drugs below a market price in a huge program like Medicare, the companies have to stop their losses by increasing their prices in the private market serving younger, working families. While lower Medicare drug prices lower Medicare insurance premiums, those “savings” result in higher premium costs outside of Medicare. Biden, alternatively, said he would save the taxpayer money and lower the budget by hundreds of billions of dollars. “It’s all about health care,” Biden said. “It’s about lowering costs for families, about fairness and security.” Neither the Kamala Harris campaign nor the White House responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment. Robert Moffit contibuted to this report. The post Biden and Harris Slam Big Pharma Despite Receiving Over $11 Million From the Industry appeared first on The Daily Signal.

On the latest episode of “The Tony Kinnett Cast,” we cover the latest news from the biggest election in decades with the Harris/Walz campaign’s refusing to do multiple debates with former President Donald Trump, the economy’s shaky footing, and a new round of election data that no one is covering. With both sides blustering over a desire to debate the other, who will chicken out first? Saurabh Sharma of American Moment joins us to dig into that data, from on-the-ground registration numbers in the toughest of swing states like Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia, to strategic shifts in both the Harris/Walz and Trump/Vance campaigns. If you’re looking for a cool, calm, and collected analysis that steers away from the clickbait to deliver some sure and steady footing in this election hurricane, you won’t want to miss this segment. Jerry Lopez, @IndySpanglish on X, stops by for another exciting installment of “Awful Tweets,” where we take the worst social media posts and roast them until golden brown. Submit posts for “Awful Tweets” here and add fuel to the dumpster fire! Catch the live radio show and livestream weeknights at 7 p.m. EDT on The Daily Signal’s YouTube, X, or Facebook. The post WATCH: A High-Stakes Game of Political Chicken appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Sharon van Rouwendaal from Netherlands won the 10km marathon swim at the 2024 Paris Olympics on Thursday, August 8. She dedicates the win to her beloved pet dog, Rio, who passed away in May of this year.